Ray Madoff

to be able to do annual taxation on these very complex interests, I think is really problematic.

And there's going to be a great incentive for people to move their assets out of the easy-to-value stock market to the difficult-to-value partnership interest.

And that could impose a cost on all of us who have retirement and other savings that really depends on a robust stock market for our own savings.

And so I think there's a lot of problems with the wealth tax.

I think if it were possible that it was possible,

constitutional, that people weren't going to move, that it could be effective and that we could get the value and we could get the public to not recoil at the idea that you have to report every single thing you own to the government, which I think is another potential problem with the wealth tax.

Sure, I think it would be great.

I think it does the most direct addressing of the problem.

But those are a lot of ifs.

And so I think we have to live in the world that we live in and not in a fantasy world where we're able to, in one step, curb the enormous power of the wealthiest Americans.

I think it's a real problem that we have, which is we have people who have astronomical amounts of wealth and we want to get it and we want to get it today and we want to address it.

But

We don't live in a political system where that is going to happen.

And my concern is when we focus on that type of thing, we create a false narrative about what's going on.

And it makes it seem like, well, we have to punish the rich, when really the problem is that we have to bring the wealthy, their investments and their inheritances into our income tax system.

They should join us as fiscal citizens, like everybody who earns money is already doing.

Is it the spending or is it the tax revenue?

It's the tax revenue, without a doubt.

It's the – and I think that if you look at the numbers –

As I say, from, let's say, 2024, those are the numbers I have in my book, right?